BackUp device for local or colo storage
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@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
OK to clarify...
Is there a demo that I can watch, of a VM being restored with SC ISO and the import of the SC backup files.
Why a VM? VM or physical, the OS is the same.
I'm sure mainly because that is the long term plan/goal to have everything virtualized. So seeing what you are planning on doing is better than seeing a sample of something that could be done, but not likely to be used by the asker.
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@DustinB3403 said:
@Dashrender If I had licensing available to test with.
What does licensing have to do with it? Unless there is some special SC license you need to do a restore?
Example.
Assuming you have 100 GB of free space on you XenServer, and you have a server that is 40 GB that is currently being backed up by SC, you could create a VM in XenServer matching the stats of the physical server, then boot that VM via the ISO and restore your own server...boot it up prove it works.. then shut it down and delete it.
No license needed.
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They have an online video of this. Under two minutes. The video is useful but I don't know about that Steven guy doing the demo...
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What @Steven shows in the video that I provided is what you would see on the Console of your XenCenter for the VM that you are restoring. The Recovery ISO would be mounted and booted and this is what you would see in XC.
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@Steven has a tutorial series to get you up and running with ShadowProtect that you should check out. That is where I am getting these from.
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So I have to ask to ask.
The storage location must be browsable in a \ipaddress\ format I'm assuming.
Scott mentioned that it's possible to restore the virtual hardware with SC as well. Is this an additional process, or something that is just performed automatically?
Do you need to create the VM with the vDISKs included or does the restore process create these automatically?
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Seems like StorageCraft is really going to be all that you need. Keeping it simple with a single product, single vendor to turn to.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Scott mentioned that it's possible to restore the hardware with SC as well. Is this an additional process, or something that is just performed automatically?
You would only backup the files in that case. We are talking the Dom0 here. Just the files, not the full VM.
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I am researching a good way to handle that.
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@StrongBad said:
@DustinB3403 said:
Scott mentioned that it's possible to restore the hardware with SC as well. Is this an additional process, or something that is just performed automatically?
You would only backup the files in that case. We are talking the Dom0 here. Just the files, not the full VM.
Yes, just the files. XenServer's Dom0 is going to be "identical" each time so no point in backing that up in its entirety.
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Don't forget, as well, that you would generally do something like have XenServer on a USB stick or SD card and then you could take an image of the full thing once in a while for failover. But that is done offline so would be problematic for recent VM configurations.
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@StrongBad ok but backing up Dom0 from Xenserver is different from what I'm thinking.
Just for an example. I need to rebuild a VM, besides adding the CPU and Memory, and Boot media could I skip the step of adding a vDisk and let storage craft add that.
Or must I add the vDisk matching what was in the original VM?
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@DustinB3403 it is the Xen config on Dom0 that would have that information.
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Why wouldn't SC at the guest level contain the virtual hardware information?
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@DustinB3403 said:
Just for an example. I need to rebuild a VM, besides adding the CPU and Memory, and Boot media could I skip the step of adding a vDisk and let storage craft add that.
Or must I add the vDisk matching what was in the original VM?
The virtual disk configuration is part of the information on XenServer and not something that any OS level tool, like StorageCraft, could ever access. It's part of the hardware. If you think of it from SC's perspective, that would be like having SC physically install a new RAID array for you. It can't do that. You need to provide the hardware onto which SC will do the restore.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Why wouldn't SC at the guest level contain the virtual hardware information?
Because the guest doesn't have that information. That's the platform level.
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So basically, using SC for this, which does seem like a better option.
But it means that each VM must be well documented, which I suspect will be difficult for "people" to maintain.
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@DustinB3403 said:
So basically, using SC for this, which does seem like a better option.
But it means that each VM must be well documented, which I suspect will be difficult for "people" to maintain.
Documentation would be quite important. Same as if you had to replace failed hardware. Although the hardware does not have to be identical.
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Documentation is really the key is what it comes down too.
Not a hard answer. Just something that needs to be well maintained.
